In 1986, Barry Sandrew left a good job as a staff neuroscientist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital to work in the movie business.

His first company colorized old black-and-white films — a process Sandrew invented. He later developed with partner Greg Passmore a new technology for converting 2-D movies into 3-D films. That led him to found Legend3D, which today employs about 300 workers in Carlsbad and a similar number in India turning 2-D films into 3-D movies.

Legend3D employees use the company's technology to convert 2D shots into 3D for first run feature films.— Legend3D

Legend3D employees use the company's technology to convert 2D shots into 3D for first run feature films.
/ Legend3D

Some of Legend3D recent projects include “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” “Maleficent,” “The Lego Movie” and two of the “Transformers” films. The company also has done conversion work on “Hugo,” “Life of Pi,” three of the “Shrek” movies, “Metallica Through the Never” concert film and “Top Gun 3D,” among others.

Today, Sandrew is chief technology officer for Legend3D. He sat down with U-T San Diego recently to discuss what’s ahead for the 3-D industry and for the company. Here are some excerpts.

Q: Tell me about the state of the 3-D industry? It seems TV makers have shifted their focus to 4K ultra-high-definition television sets.

A:

I have written a lot about this in my blog, and one of the things I wrote was 3-D TV was too much, too fast. Consumers weren’t really ready for it. They didn’t know the difference between passive glasses and active glasses. If you went into a retailer and asked them anything about 3-D, they generally didn’t know about it because they weren’t educated themselves.

So it was something everyone jumped on, but I don’t think the structure of the retail industry was ready for it at the time, and certainly there was not enough content.

Q: So what’s happened now?

A: It sort of went underground. What I mean by that is nobody advertises 3-D anymore. But 3-D is very much there. If you went to buy a big screen, 4K Sony television — I saw one last night — it includes 3-D. But they are not promoting the 3-D. They’re promoting the 4K.

The thing about 4K is it makes 3-D better because it’s higher resolution. And 3-D makes 4K better, because 4K alone, I don’t think, is sufficient to drive the market. While it is driving a good deal of business, I think 3-D is going to make 4K worthwhile to buy.

Q: Beyond the living room, what’s happening with 3-D in theaters?

A: I am on the board of governors of the International 3D and Advanced Imaging Society. We are privy to a lot of statistics that are very important to 3-D.

If you take the top 16 highest-grossing films of all time at the box office, 12 of them were 3-D. These are all billion-dollar movies.

If you look at the top 15 highest-grossing films for 2013, 13 of them were 3-D. A majority of those were converted — not all of them — but conversion has become very popular.

In 2014, we are repeating this. It is essentially the same trend. The top nine feature films so far in 2014 are 3-D.